The box set comprising the entire second season of Treme had been lying on my bedside table for months without being watched. One reason for that was, of course, time. Watching a box set can become an addiction and even if you start by watching the first couple of episodes, before you realise it, you’ve spent the entire night, eyes glued to the television screen, watching the entire truckload of episodes and, in effect, killed any prospect of functioning normally at work the following morning. Read more

One of my favourite podcasts—a free one to boot—is called The Roadhouse. It’s a weekly blues podcast that is into its 360th episode and, for the past five or six years that I’ve been a subscriber, a great way to discover blues music. Run by Tony Steidler-Dennison who calls his podcast a “true labour of love”, The Roadhouse is described is a podcast that gets you “the finest blues that you never heard”. That’s true. Listen to any of the hour-long episodes of The Roadhouse and, even if you’re a hard-core blues fan, you are likely to be surprised by the number of new artistes that you can discover. Read more

When I sat down to write this instalment of Download Central, I realised that many of you may not be able to read this today for I have enough empirical reasons to believe that on the morning of December 25 many people have difficulty navigating lines of print and making coherent sense of them. I’ve also realised over the years that this morning we will all probably be better off listening to music rather than trying to read anything. Read more

Ever since The New York Times did a gushing story a couple of weeks back about his place, Emilio Vitolo’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Salubrious isn’t a word you’d use to describe New York’s East Houston Street around where it intersects with Mott Street. Neither would you call it tony or elegant. Far from it. There is a kind of perpetual pattern about the construction that happens to take place around the area. Large trucks, big men with hard hats, scaffoldings, and paint cans…. All of this is ubiquitous around that stretch of E Houston. Not exactly a place where you’d expect star musicians to hang out. Read more

You are unlikely to find a rock musician who works harder than Warren Haynes. The 51-year-old lead guitarist and singer works in three bands – Gov’t Mule, which he fronts, The Allman Brothers Band where he plays the lead guitar along with, Derek Trucks, his own solo projects, as well as occasional stints with Phil Lesh & Friends. How the man manages to do all of that for outfits that tour like maniacs – most of these bands mainly play live gigs (sometimes more than a 100 shows a year) and record very few studio albums – is a mystery. Yet Haynes, who was featured at No. 23 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, powers on, shuffling his dates between bands and, as he did recently, makes time to record studio albums as well. Read more

The reason why I avoid going for rock shows—here in India or anywhere else—is because it is hard to feel good if you’re like a dinosaur in an audience whose average age typically hovers around half of yours. You could, of course, ask me, perfectly legitimately too, what do I expect if I, plumb in the middle of middle-age, insist on listening to bands that people half my age or less than that find contemporary, interesting and hip. But I shall choose not to answer stupid questions. Read more

It was 1977. I was, er, let’s just say, very young and had my first brush with southern American rock bands. An older cousin had handed me an LP, The South’s Greatest Hits, which had come out that year, and with it began a torrid affair with southern rock bands, an affair that, as you shall soon find out, has passed the test of time. The South’s Greatest Hits had stellar tunes by stellar bands. I got to listen to the Allman Brothers Band, Charlie Daniels Band, Elvin Bishop, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dr. John and others. I was hooked. Read more